UConn Huskies blazing path of dominance as they prepare for South Carolina Gamecocks

Let me throw some numbers at you: 44, 40, 42, 48, 16, 10, 44, 24, 46, 10, 62, 60, 39, 16, 40, 55, 55, 53, 64, 43, 58. Give up? That's the margin of victory of the UConn Huskies' 21 games thus far.

Game number 22, against East Carolina, a 9-13 team over all and bearing a 3-7 record in The American, should be just another notch in the belt for Geno Auriemma and his club, a minor annoyance on their way to yet another national title - their fourth straight. You couldn't blame them for looking way ahead to the championship game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on April 5.

But game number 23 will be the one everyone's focused on. If UConn does what it's supposed to do on Sunday and beat the Pirates, they will enter Monday's nationally televised game against South Carolina at the Colonial Life Arena with the 22-0 mark as the Gamecocks. How good have the Huskies been?

--Their average margin victory thus far has been an astonishing 41.3. It breaks down like this: out of their 21 wins, just five have been by 24 points or less. Every other win has been by greater than 39 points, with five of the last six being by greater than 50. By comparison, the Gamecocks' largest margin of victory has been 53, set against Arkansas on January 3. Their average win margin is 18.3, with just four wins by 31 points or more. Part of this might be due to the fact that the SEC is more competitive than The American from top to bottom, but thrashing opponents in that fashion night in and night out is still impressive.

--UConn has allowed just 48.6 points a game. They've given up 70 or more points just three times: against DePaul (70), Notre Dame (81), and Maryland (73). All three teams were ranked at the time.

--The last time the Huskies lost was on November 17, 2014 at then #6 Stanford, an 88-86 overtime loss. Since then, they've won their last 58 games. Going back even further, they're 98-1 since the 2013-14 season (when they ran the table in route to the championship) and 136-5 since 2012-13 (the year they won the first of their three straight titles). The team has literally lost five games in the past (almost) four seasons - 96.5% of their games have been wins. That includes a 87-62 rout of the Gamecocks at Gampel Pavillion on February 10 of last year.

I wrote a few days back that if the Gamecocks were to defeat the Huskies, not only would it be the biggest win in program history, it would be a game that would shake up the storylines that have UConn on the road to a four-peat. It certainly won't be the last time these two teams will ever meet each other. If things break the way they're supposed to, they'll see each other again in Indy in two months - with much more on the line.